PBS and the $3.5M carrot ...

A 2-year PBS series about public pension cuts has some troubling aspects, first and foremost the show's sugar daddy -- billionaire former Enron honk with an agenda that seems to go against everything "Pension Peril" tries to present -- is putting $3.5 million of capital into the venture, with a caveat.

But most troubling of all, the report on Vallejo promoted the city councilor’s “campaigning to change (state) law to give cities the right to negotiate for pension cuts.” PBS’s “Pension Peril” correspondent noted that the legislator’s coalition is “hoping to get the initiative onto the ballot” so that cities can unilaterally cut public employee pensions. What the PBS “Pension Peril” series omitted is the fact that the “Pension Peril” series’ own benefactor, John Arnold, is the major financier of the very California ballot initiative PBS was promoting. Arnold’s involvement in that ballot measure follows his earlier funding of pension-cutting advocacy in California, which PBS also did not mention.

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Seems like PBS is playing fast and loose with its rules. Or maybe it doesn't care.